


Castaways

by seitsensarvi



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 13:38:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8104441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seitsensarvi/pseuds/seitsensarvi
Summary: He can’t regret, he repeats to convince himself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> levi's right, and wrong, and neither.
> 
> ch 84 & 85 spoilers

 

Levi didn’t burn the commander’s body even though he knows he should have, knows they had the time. The thought of inflicting any damage to the peaceful face is unbearable to him so he lays Erwin in a pretense of sleep instead, hard-earned, the only way he knows how to bury the dead. Never knew the fine details of proper rituals, the caskets and the pyres, but he knows that the body is supposed to rest and so he makes the bed, lets the sunlight bathe the room and it feels like the warm home he wished his mother, the safe haven he wished this man, so it’s enough.

There’s a brand on him, in the shape of Erwin’s smile and gaze and hopes and Levi thanks him in his mind, thanks him though it hurts with every breath he takes because, he knows, if it wasn’t for him he would not be here to feel the furnace of his blood beat with every refused sob, burning his veins, scalding hot, at all.

It’s an irony, he thinks, that he got to be reborn to grant this man peace, that he was blessed to bless in turn. Maybe it’s also only fair that he could repay Erwin in the end, that he learnt to give like he was given — and how he longed to give.

Levi can’t regret because he can’t think of Erwin’s hell as any heaven, his or else, the few empty days and many emptier halls, deserted by their comrades, one by one, or sometimes a hundred. He’d never really wondered where the dead went, before, remembering only decay and dust and the stinging rot from his childhood, but then he’d learnt; that every fallen soldier lived behind Erwin’s eyelids, that they whispered some days, that some nights they screamed.

He can’t regret, he repeats to convince himself.

He has a promise to keep and yet he feels like he might never be able to fly again because maybe, he hopes, his gift was enough. Maybe he successfully tore every last feather from his back, the ones Erwin admired so, to lay at the man’s feet and maybe they were enough for him to take off, to rise.

He welcomes every scorching drop racing through his body, all together they’re a river, a torrent, a roaring sea from the old books and no matter how hard he tries to picture the immense troubled waters, he can’t imagine any wave crashing harder than the flow in his raging heart.

But he decided long ago. He’ll take every suffering as his own, because if he mourns this one loss then it means he spared Erwin.

He’s thankful, because him bearing this one grief means Erwin doesn’t have to.

This one time, he got to be selfish knowing Erwin wanted him to be. So how could he regret, how could he ever–

*

It takes all Levi has to let the beloved blue disappear in the safety of a lasting sleep, too deep and too certain, and in those fleeting seconds it hits him : there’s nothing left of him. He’s given everything.

There are flowers on the bedside table, dripping light.

 


End file.
